Tags
06 Wednesday May 2015
02 Monday Mar 2015
Posted Geo data, Populations
in04 Saturday Oct 2014
Posted Geo data
inTags
All of the world’s flight routes coloured by length.
Contributing layers
Red: Inter-continental flights, greater than 3,300 km (~2,000 miles).
Green: Continental flights, between 1,400 and 3,300 km (900 – 2,000 miles)
Blue: Short flights, between 500 and 1,400 km (300 – 900 miles).
Yellow: Really short flights, less than 500 km (300 miles).
Flight data from openflights.org (modified); country shapes from thematicmapping.org. Robinson projection.
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
My previous post made me wonder about the CO2 emissions I’m responsible for. Spoiler: Quite a lot.
My defence: I fly less, stay longer. This is illustrated by the map below that shows open jaw flights. I travelled overland from blue airports to a red ones, sometimes (eg Quito to Rio) for quite a long way!
CO2 calculations: Based on these values for average CO2 equivalent emissions per passenger km, I have a lifetime CO2 footprint of 21.3 tonnes, which is only 722 kg / year. This is a bit misleading as I didn’t get to choose where I went on holiday UNESCed for the first half of my life. Over the last 10 years my average is 2.0 tonnes / year.
Is this a lot? According to the World Bank this is the same as the average emissions of a Peruvian. I like this comparison because I entered Peru in one of the most environmentally friendly ways I can imagine – sharing a medium sized car with seven other people … and a (live) chicken.
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted Geo data
inI’ve been travelling (and UNESCing) for a few years, and wanted a way of visualising my personal travel history. One way is a map showing all of the flights that I’ve ever taken. Here I’ve coloured the flight path by year (blues are oldest, reds the most recent).
Some detail in Europe:
World map from thematicmapping.org, aerodromes from openflights.org.
29 Friday Aug 2014
Posted Geo problems
inThe postGIS GEOGRAPHY type connects two points on the Earth’s surface by the shortest route (the great-circle line). Unfortunately when displayed in Quantum GIS, this will appear as the shortest route between two points in map-space (actually a rhumb line).
To display a great circle line I have used the following postgreSQL code:
SELECT st_makeline(st_segmentize((SELECT geog FROM paths WHERE gid = 1), 50000)::GEOMETRY);
This returns a GEOMETRY line string, with a node every 50 km. Useful if you want to plot idealised flight paths…